❗️1,200+ VOICES DELIVERED. MORATORIUM PROPOSED. NOW IT’S THE BOARD’S TURN.

For the past year, this community kept showing up.

Parents, teachers, employees, students, neighbors and local leaders packed meeting rooms, read budgets, followed committees, challenged assumptions, asked questions that too often did not have clear answers, and refused to let decisions this consequential happen quietly.

That persistence changed the conversation.

In September, the district stepped back from the proposed school closures. This week, more than 1,200 petition signatures were formally delivered to the Board, and Vadim Altschuler submitted a request under California Education Code §35145.5 asking the Board to consider a temporary moratorium on school closures and consolidations as a future Discussion/Possible Action item.

The Board was not handed only a demand. It was handed a workable path forward: a one-page draft resolution that would pause final closure decisions, establish transparent districtwide criteria, require public review of the financial, enrollment, transportation, facilities, educational and equity impacts, compare reasonable alternatives, and ensure affected communities are heard before any future vote.

The point is simple: families deserve stability, and public commitments should mean something.

If the district intends to stand by the direction it announced in September, there is now a clear way to put that commitment into policy. If circumstances genuinely change later, the public deserves more than another sudden shift. The district should explain what changed, why it changed, what evidence supports it, and what alternatives were considered — on the record, before a decision is made.

What began as communities defending individual schools became something much bigger. Morongo Valley, Landers, Friendly Hills and Palm Vista stood together. Families from across the Basin joined the movement, learned the process together and empowered one another. A threat aimed at individual campuses helped create a districtwide community that now knows how to read the documents, follow the money, ask the questions and hold the process accountable.

That is worth celebrating. But it is not permission to look away.

The schools remain open. The signatures are on the Board table. A formal path forward has been offered. Now the district must decide whether the stability promised to families will be backed by action — or left as words that can change later.

The community is ready to work with school leadership on what comes next: strengthening enrollment, improving campuses, expanding opportunities and building a better future for students across the Morongo Basin.

But partnership does not mean silence.

Public oversight stays. Questions stay. Accountability stays.

We are still here. We are still watching. And we will keep insisting that every child and every community has a place at the table.

No community left behind. No student left behind.
From Morongo Valley to Wonder Valley — one Basin, one school district for every child.

Morongo Basin Parents for Transparency